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Web 2.0 and the Evolution of Instructional Design
By Jay Cross
The culture of the Internet is blowing back at us, merging the real and thevirtual, and shaping how we think and act. Advertising Age
reports that web 2.0 was the most cited definition onWikipedia for 2006.However, I find that the term
web 2.0
is like a Rorschachink blot test: You see what you want to see.Here's my take: Internet culture is a mash-up of three interlinked schools of thought:
The Cluetrain Manifesto
+ Kevin Kelly/Wired/New Economy + TimO'Reilly/Web 2.0/Open Source.
The Cluetrain Manifesto
In my opinion,
The Cluetrain Manifesto
is the most revolutionary business bookof the late twentieth century. The
clue
is that the Internet enablesperson-to-person conversation, and everyone is the wiser for it. The entirebook and a bit of its history are available for free at cluetrain.com.Some key concepts from the book include honesty, authenticity, andtransparency:Markets are conversations. Their members communicate inlanguage that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and oftenshocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, thehuman voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked.There are no secrets. The networked market knows more thancompanies do about their own products. And whether the news isgood or bad, they tell everyone.Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously.They need to get a sense of humor. Getting a sense of humor doesnot mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, itrequires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuinepoint of view.Imagine a world where everyone was constantly learning, a worldwhere what you wondered was more interesting than what youknew, and curiosity counted for more than certain knowledge.
Kevin Kelly/Wired/New Economy
Kevin Kelly is the pied piper of the new economy. As the founding editor of
Wired
magazine, author of
Out of Control
and
New Rules for the New Economy
,and cohort of Steward Brand, Kelly's technophilic philosophy has become thenew business gospel. Kelly's books and past issues of Wired magazine areavailable on the web for free (at kk.org and wired.com.) Key Kelly conceptsinclude connections, push the edges, power to peers.
Jay Cross
is chief scientistat Internet Time Group LLCin Berkeley, California. Jay isthe author of
Informal Learning: Rediscovering theNatural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance
and co-authorof
ImplementingE-Learning.
Reach him at jaycross@internettime.com.
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Some aptmaxims from New Rules:The tricks of the intangible trade will become the tricks of yourtrade.Communication – which in the end is what the digital technologyand media are all about – is not just a sector of the economy.Communication IS the economy.We are connecting everything to everything.At present there is far more to be gained by pushing theboundaries of what can be done by the bottom than by focusing onwhat can be done at the top.When information is plentiful, peers take over.
Tim O'Reilly/Networks/Open Source
Tim O'Reillypublishes books about the net and open source software. ButO'Reilly is more than a publisher, his goal is "
to become the information provider of choice to the people who are shaping the future of our planet, and to enable change by capturing and transmitting the knowledge of innovatorsand innovative communities."
O'Reilly and his colleagues coined the term
Web 2.0.
Earlier on, theyrepositioned free software as
Open Software
. A dozen years ago, when the webwas on its early, wobbly legs, O'Reilly offered "Internet in a Box," the softwareyou needed to get on the net if you had a PC running DOS 3.0. Key O'Reillyconcepts include perpetual beta, the long tail, user-centered development,loose coupling.From O'Reilly's personal web site and reports of his conference presentations:Open source licensing began as an attempt to preserve a culture of sharing, and only later led to an expanded awareness of the value of that sharing. Open source licensing is a means of encouragingInternet-enabled collaboration.The fundamental architecture of hyperlinking ensures that thevalue of the web is created by its users.A successful open source software project consists of "small piecesloosely joined". Therefore architect your software or service in sucha way as to be used easily as a component of a larger system. Keepit modular, document your interfaces, and use a license thatdoesn’t hinder recombination.There is great benefit in sharing your development efforts andprocesses with your users. Therefore release early and often. Setup mechanisms for user feedback, bug reports and patchcontribution.When devices and programs are connected to the Internet,applications are no longer software artifacts, they’re ongoingservices. Amazon, eBay, and Google just roll in new features,unsure whether they even want them… therefore don’t package upnew features into monolithic releases: rather, fold them in on aregular basis. So if you’re not already thinking this way: operate asif you’re in perpetual beta.
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Many of the limiting factors from the physical world are absent onthe Internet. Therefore use the power of the computer to monetizeniches formerly too small to be commercial. Find the long tail inyour own – or someone else’s! – business. Google Adsense figuredout you could monetize all these too-small-for-usual-advertiserspages.
How Internet culture impacts learning design
The Internet stew created by those sources is made of perpetual beta, thelong tail, user-centered development, loose coupling, intangibles, connections,push the edges, power to peers, honesty, authenticity, and transparency.Each of these concepts has an impact on the way workplace learning andperformance practitioners look at next-generation learning.
Perpetual beta.
Nothing is ever finished. Hence, it's better to put anunfinished offering out there before dotting the i's and crossing the t's.Instead the mantra is: "Do it, try it, fix it." Practitioners should drive changeswith feedback from learners themselves. More frequent reviews translate intoless time invested in going down the wrong path. If someone says a project isfinished, it is.
The Long Tail.
When it comes to learning opportunities, small businesses,esoteric specialists, and fast-moving teams have traditionally beenshort-changed. You couldn't reach critical mass, so it wasn't worth the effort.Now you can because web technology scales. Five-person companies can useSalesforce.com for customer relationship management. Expect to see alearning equivalent soon. As for the esoterica, distance no longer keepsspecialists from conversing with one another. Rich niches imply that a need toassess upside opportunities more closely than out-of-pocket costs.
Loose coupling.
A specific case is
Cluetrain
author David Weinberger'sconceptualization of the web as "small pieces, loosely joined." I've been doingan increasing amount of my work on the web, and I am astounded how theability to work with small chunks improves my productivity. What once took arewrite now requires simply changing a link. No learning environment needresist improvements until it bites the dust. What we once thought of as"maintenance" is becoming more important than the initial "deliverable." Piecesof any system morph into plug-compatible chunks that can be swapped inand out without disrupting the ecosystem. Changing a small item does notrequire unpacking the whole apparatus.
Intangibles.
More and more of the world's wealth is intangible. You can't seepatents, brands, good will, expertise, culture, and so forth, but they accountfor more and more of corporations' value. Forget about measuring only what'svisible to the naked eye, and begin assessing transfers of value.
Connections
. Connections are everything. They create networks, andnetworks are growing exponentially. If your learning plans don't embrace thepower of networks, go back the drawing board for another look. Learningoccurs in conversations, collaboration, knowledge transfer, focused news, andother network phenomena. A prime directive in any evolving learnscape is toincrease the throughput of personal network connections such as instantmessenger, higher bandwidth, searchable directories, optimized organizationalchannels, and watercoolers, both virtual and real.
Push the edges
. Twenty years ago, training departments fretted aboutconsistency: providing precisely the same training experience to everyone in
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